At 11:25 PM 8/29/01 -0700, Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com> wrote:
A group of researchers at Notre Dame figured out how to use the TCP Checksum calculations to get other computers to do number-crunching for them.
"Below, we present an implementation of a parasitic computer using the checksum function. In order for this to occur, one needs to design a special message that coerces a target server into performing the desired computation."
The article has the amount of great mathematical depth you'd expect from CNN :-) But it does say that the paper will be published in "Nature" this week.
And the message in my mailbox immediately after the above was Nature's ToC including: Parasitic computing A-L BARABASI, V W FREEH, H JEONG & J B BROCKMAN http://www.nature.com/nlink/v412/n6850/abs/412894a0_fs.html Cheers, Paul Pomes